by Daniel Mason
“You cannot mean you welcome British rule?”
“I am very lucky,” she said only.
Edgar persisted. “But many people in England strongly believe that the colonies should have their own governments. In some ways I am inclined to agree. We have done some terrible things.”
“And some good.”
“I wouldn’t expect someone Burmese to say that,” he said.
“I think perhaps it is a mistake of the ruling to think that you can change the ruled.”
She said this slowly, a thought like water spilled, now spreading around them. Edgar waited for her to say more, but when she spoke again, she told him that her father had sent her to a small private school for the Burmese elite in Mandalay, where she was one of two women in her class. There she had excelled in mathematics and English, and when she left she was hired to teach English to students only three years her junior. She had loved teaching and became good friends with other teachers, including several British women. The schoolmaster at the time, a sergeant in the army who had lost a leg in battle, had noticed her talent, and arranged to tutor her himself in the hours after class. She spoke of him the way one tells a story with a hidden ending, but Edgar didn’t ask her more. The sergeant had fallen ill when his amputation site suddenly became gangrenous. She had left school to care for him. He died after several feverish weeks. She had been devastated, but she returned to school. The new schoolmaster also invited her to his office after hours, she said, lowering her eyes, but with different intentions.
She was dismissed two weeks later. The spurned schoolmaster accused her of stealing books and selling them in the market. There was little she could do to answer the charges, and she hadn’t wanted to. Two of her friends had returned to Britain with their husbands, and she shuddered at the thought of the schoolmaster’s pawing hands. Captain Nash-Burnham, who had been a close friend of her father, arrived at her home two days after she was fired. He said nothing of the schoolmaster, and she knew he couldn’t. He offered her a position as a housekeeper in the visitors’ quarters. The quarters, he told her that warm morning, are usually empty, should you choose to have friends visit, or even hold classes. That week she moved in, and the following week she began to teach English at the little table beneath the papaya trees. She had been there for four years.
“And how did you meet Doctor Carroll?” asked Edgar.
“Like you, he was once a guest in Mandalay.”
They stayed on the riverbank for the rest of the afternoon, talking beneath the willows, and Khin Myo spoke mainly of Burma, of festivals, of stories she was told growing up. Edgar asked more questions. They spoke neither of Katherine nor of the Doctor.
As they sat together, Shan families passed on the way to the river to fish or wash or play in the shallows, and if they noticed the couple, they said nothing, It is only natural that a guest be treated with hospitality, the quiet man who has come to mend the singing elephant is shy, and walks with the posture of one who is unsure of the world, we too would keep him company to make him feel welcome, but we do not speak English. He does not speak Shan, but he tries, he says som tae-tae kha when he passes us on the trail, and kin waan when he likes the cook’s food. Som tae-tae kha means “Thank you.” Someone should tell him this, we all know he thinks it means “Hello.” He plays with the children, this is different from the other white men who come here, perhaps he does not have any of his own. He is quiet, and the astrologers say that he is looking for something, they know this from the position of the stars on the day he arrived, and because there were three big taukte lizards in his bed and they all pointed east and chirped twice, the woman who cleans his room remembered this, and she went to ask the astrologers what it meant. They say he is one of the kind of men who has dreams, but tells no one.
Dusk came, and at last Khin Myo said, I must go, and she didn’t say why. And Edgar thanked her for keeping him company, The afternoon was lovely, I hope to see you again.
I hope so, too, she said, and he thought, There is nothing wrong with this. He stayed at the river until the scent of cinnamon and coconut had drifted away.
Edgar awoke in the middle of the night, his teeth rattling. It is cold, he thought, This must be winter, and he pulled another blanket over himself. He shivered and slept.
He awoke again, sweating. His head was hot. He turned and sat up. He ran his hand over his face and brought it down wet with perspiration. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe and gasped for air and tore off the blanket and pushed aside the mosquito net. He crawled outside, his head spinning. On the balcony, he inhaled deeply, felt a wave of nausea, vomited. I am sick, finally, he thought, curled his legs up to his chest, and felt his sweat dry and grow cold, as the wind came up from the river. He slept again.
He awoke to the sensation of a hand on his shoulder. The Doctor crouched over him, his stethoscope hanging from his neck. “Mr. Drake, are you all right? What are you doing out here?”
The light was dim; it was dawn. Edgar rolled onto his back, groaning. “My head …” he moaned.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, last night was terrible, I was so cold and shivering, I got a blanket, I was sweating so much.” The Doctor put his hand on his forehead.
“What do you think is wrong?” Edgar asked.
“Malaria. I can’t be certain, but it definitely seems like it. I will need to look at your blood.” He turned and said something to a Shan boy who was standing behind him. “I will get you quinine sulfate, it should make you better.” He looked concerned. “Come.” He helped Edgar up and led him to his bed. “Look, the blankets are still soaked. You’ve gotten yourself quite a nasty case. Come and lie down.”
The Doctor left. Edgar slept. A boy came and woke him. He brought water and several small pills for Edgar to swallow. Edgar slept again. He awoke and it was afternoon. The Doctor was sitting by the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, I think. I am quite thirsty.”
The Doctor nodded and gave him some water. “This is the usual course of the disease. First chills and then fever. Then you begin to sweat. And then often, as now, you suddenly feel better.”
“Will it come back?”
“It depends. Sometimes it occurs only every two days, sometimes only every three days. Sometimes it comes more often, or it is much less regular. The fever is terrible. I know; I’ve had malaria uncountable times myself. I get delirious.”
Edgar tried to sit up. He felt weak. “Go to sleep,” the Doctor said.
He slept.
He awoke and again it was dark. Miss Ma, the nurse, was sleeping on a bed near the door. Again he felt his chest tighten. It was hot, the air was still, stifling. He suddenly felt the need to get out of the room. He lifted the mosquito net and slid out. He stood tentatively. He felt weak, but he could walk. He tiptoed toward the door. The night was dark, the moon hidden by clouds. He took several hungry breaths and lifted his arms and stretched. I need to walk, he thought, and padded quietly down the stairs. The camp seemed empty. He was barefoot, and the coolness of the ground felt good on his feet. He followed the path down to the river.
It was cool on the banks, and he sat and breathed deeply. The Salween moved past silently. From somewhere came a rustling, and a faint cry. He stood and walked uneasily across the beach to a small trail that ran by the river through thicker brush.
The sound grew louder as he walked through the bushes. Near the end of the trail, he caught a glimpse of something moving on the bank. He took two more steps through the brush and then he saw them, and for a moment he stood still, shocked. A young Shan couple lay in the shallows of the river. The young man’s hair was tied up above his head, the woman’s hair was loose, spread out over the sand. She wore a wet hta main and it was pushed up her body, covering her breasts, revealing a smooth hip sprinkled with sand and the river. Her arms wrapped around the young man’s back, her nails gripping his tattoos, and they moved silently, the only sound was the shifting sand and t
he river as it lapped against four feet. She moaned again, more loudly now, and her back began to arch, her hta main pooling down against her arms, her body turning, wet sand falling from her hips. Edgar stumbled back into the bushes.
The fevers came again, stronger now. His body shook, his jaw clenched tight, his arms curled up against his chest, he tried to grab his shoulders but his hands only trembled, he shook the bed and the mosquito netting. The water basin on the table rattled as he moved. Miss Ma awoke and came and covered him, but he still was cold. He tried to thank her, but he couldn’t speak. The water basin on the table rattled to the edge.
He grew hot again, like the night before. He threw off the blankets. He was no longer shaking. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped into his eyes. He tore off his shirt, it was soaked, his thin cotton drawers stuck to his legs, and he fought the urge to tear them off too, I must be decent, he thought, and his body ached and he ran his hands over his face to wipe off the sweat, over his chest, his arms. He turned, the sheets were wet and warm, he tried to breathe and tore at the mosquito net. He heard footsteps and saw Miss Ma go to the water basin to moisten a cloth. She lifted the mosquito netting and pressed the damp cloth to his head. It was cold as she ran it over his body, and the heat retreated briefly, returning once the cloth had passed. Like this she chased the fever, but it burned deeper now. He lost consciousness.
And now he floats above the bed, he can see himself. Water rushes from his skin, pooling, it begins to move, it is no longer sweat but ants that crawl out of his pores and swarm. He is black with ants. He falls back into his body and he screams, slapping away at the ants, they fall on the sheets and turn to tiny fires, and as he brushes them off they are replaced by more, emerging from his pores like from an anthill, not fast or slow, but incessant, they cover him. He screams and he hears rustling at the bedside, there are many forms now, he thinks he knows them, the Doctor and Miss Ma, and now another figure, standing behind the other two. The room is dark and red, like a fire. He sees their faces, but they blur and melt, and their mouths become the muzzles of dogs, laughing mouths, and they reach for him with paws, and everywhere they touch him it is like ice, and he screams and tries to beat away their arms. One of the dogs leans toward him and presses its muzzle against his cheek, its breath stinks of heat and mice, and its eyes burn clear, like glass, and in them he sees a woman, she is sitting on the bank of a river watching a pair of bodies, and he sees them too, the brown arms gripping the broad white back, pale and dirty with sand, faces close and panting. There is one boat left on the sand, and she takes it and begins to paddle away, he tries to rise, but now he lies in the grip of the brown arms and he feels a slipperiness, a heat, and feels the muzzle part his lips, a rough tongue slip into his mouth. He tries to rise but others surround him, he tries to fight but falls back, exhausted. He sleeps.
He awakes hours later and feels a cold moist towel on his head. Khin Myo is sitting by his bed. One hand holds the towel to his forehead. He takes the other in his. She doesn’t move away. “Khin Myo …” he says.
“Quiet, Mr. Drake, sleep.”
16
The fever broke alongside the dawn. It was the morning of the third day since he became ill. He awoke and he was alone. An empty water basin sat on the floor next to the bed, two towels hung over its side.
His head ached. The night before was a feverish blur, and he lay back and tried to remember what happened. Images came but they were strange and disturbing. He turned over onto his side. The sheets were moist and cool. He slept.
He awoke to the sound of his name, a man’s voice. He turned over. Doctor Carroll sat at the bedside. “Mr. Drake, you look better this morning.”
“Yes, I think so. I feel much better.”
“I am glad. It was terrible last night. Even I was concerned … and I have seen so many cases.”
“I don’t remember it. I only remember seeing you and Khin Myo and Miss Ma.”
“Khin Myo wasn’t here. It must have been the delirium.”
Edgar looked up from the bed. The Doctor peered at him, his face stern and unexpressive. “Yes, perhaps only the delirium,” said Edgar, and he turned over and slept again.
Over the course of the next few days, the fevers came again, but they were not as strong, and the terrible dreams didn’t return. Miss Ma left his bedside to take care of the patients in the hospital, but returned to visit him throughout the day. She brought him fruit and rice and a soup that tasted like ginger and made him sweat and his body shiver when she fanned him. One day she came with scissors to cut his hair. The Doctor explained that the Shan believed this helped fight illness.
He began to walk. He had lost weight, and his clothes hung even more loosely on his thin frame. But mostly he rested on the balcony and watched the river. The Doctor invited a man to play a Shan flute for him, and he sat in his bed beneath the mosquito netting and listened.
One night, alone, he thought he could hear the sound of the piano being played. The notes drifted down through the camp. He thought it was Chopin at first, but the song changed, elusive, elegiac, a melody he had never heard.
Color returned to his face, and he began to share his meals with the Doctor once again. The Doctor asked him about Katherine, and he told him how they had met. But mostly he listened. To stories of the war, of Shan customs, of men who rowed boats with their legs, of monks with mystical powers. The Doctor told him that he had sent a description of a new flower to the Linnean Society, and that he had begun to translate Homer’s Odyssey into Shan, “My favorite tale, Mr. Drake, and one in which I find a most personal significance.” He was translating it, he said, for a Shan storyteller who had asked for a legend of “the kind that is told at night, around campfires.” “I am now at the song of Demodokos. I don’t know if you remember it. He sings of the sack of Troy, and Odysseus, the great warrior, cries, ‘as a woman weeps.’”
They went at night to listen to musicians play, drums and cymbals and harps and flutes mixing in a jungle of sounds. They stayed until it was late. When they returned to their rooms, Edgar went out onto his balcony to listen again.
After several days, the Doctor asked, “How are you feeling?”
“I am well. Why do you ask now?”
“I have to go away again. It should only be a couple of days. Khin Myo will stay. You won’t have to be alone.”
The Doctor didn’t tell Edgar where he was going, and Edgar didn’t see him leave.
The following morning, he rose and walked to the river to watch the fishermen. He stood in the brush of blooming flowers and watched bees flit between the patches of colors. He played football with some of the children, but tired quickly and returned to his room. He sat on the balcony and looked out on the river. He watched the sun move. The cook brought him lunch, a broth with sweet noodles and fried crisp pieces of garlic. Kin waan, he said when he tasted it, and the cook smiled.
Night came, and he slept a sweet sleep in which he dreamed he was dancing at a festival. The villagers played strange instruments, and he moved as if in a waltz, but alone.
The next day, he decided to write to Katherine, at last. A new thought had begun to bother him—that the army had notified her that he had left Mandalay. He had to convince himself that the military’s obvious lack of interest in her before he left—which had angered him so then—meant that they were even less likely to be in contact with her now.
He took out paper and a pen and wrote her name. He began to describe Mae Lwin but stopped after several lines. He wanted to describe to her the village above the mountain, but realized he had seen it only from a distance. It was still cool outside. A fine time for a walk, he thought, The exercise will do me good. He put on his hat and—despite the heat—a waistcoat he usually wore on summer strolls in England. He walked down to the center of camp.
In the clearing, two women were wandering up from the river carrying baskets of clothes, one against her hip, the other balancing the load on top of her turban. Edgar followed the
m along the small trail that ducked into the forest and climbed the ridge. In the quiet of the woods, the women heard his footsteps behind them, and turned and giggled, whispering something to each other in Shan. He tipped his hat. The trees thinned, and the women climbed a steep rise, up the mountain, toward the village spread over its back. Edgar followed, and as they entered the village, the women again turned and giggled, and once again he tipped his hat.
At the first set of houses, perched on stilts, an older woman crouched in the doorway, the patterned fabric of her dress taut against her knees. A pair of scrawny pigs lay sleeping in the shade, snorting and twitching their tails through their dreams.
She was smoking a cheroot the width of her wrist. Edgar greeted her. “Good day,” he said. She slowly took the cheroot from her mouth, gripping it between her gnarled and ring-laden third and fourth fingers. He half expected her to growl, goblinlike, but her face broke into a big toothless smile, her gums stained with betel and tobacco. Her face was heavily tattooed, not with solid lines like the men, but with hundreds of small points, in a pattern that reminded Edgar of a cribbage board. Later he would learn that she was not Shan but Chin, a tribe from the west, that this was written in the details of her decoration. “Good-bye, madam,” said Edgar, and she returned the cheroot to her lips, inhaling deeply, sucking her wrinkled cheeks into the cavern of her mouth. Edgar thought again of the ubiquitous advertisements in London: Cigars de Joy, One of these Cigarettes gives immediate relief in the worst attack of Asthma, Cough, Bronchitis, and Shortness of Breath.
He continued to walk. He passed small, dry fields, patterned in rising terraces. With the drought, the planting season had yet to begin, and the soil was turned up in hard, dry clods. The houses were raised at varying heights, their walls like those of the camp buildings, interlaced strips of bamboo woven to create geometrical patterns. The road was empty except for scattered bands of dusty children, and he saw many people gathered in the houses. It was hot, so hot that even the best soothsayers had failed to forecast that today would be the day the rains would come again to the Shan Plateau. The men and women sat and talked in the shade and couldn’t understand the Englishman who took walks under such a sun.
